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Brian Hughes: News gathered from social media is increasingly unreliable

Recent studies suggest that much of what we share on platforms like Twitter and Facebook are even destructive to the social order

Brian Hughes is a professor of media studies at Queens College, CUNY. He writes and researches on the topics of extremism, new media, and the Middle East. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN)Have you heard? Hillary Clinton is dying of Parkinson's disease. Also, Donald Trump thinks the United States shouldn't have stopped the Bosnian genocide. Angry mobs of "Bernie bros" are hurling chairs at Democratic staffers. And President Obama, who smells like sulfur, is followed everywhere he goes by a swarm of flies.

These are fake statements, pulled from the bowels of the internet. Can you tell?

If you get your information from social media, the world is an almost supernaturally dark place these days. Our feeds and timelines are jammed with outrageous and incredible accounts that prove what we all already suspected: our political opponents are crazy. Maybe some of them are downright evil.

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The good news is that much of what you read via social media isn't true. The bad news is that more and more people believe it is. Social media increasingly dominates our news-getting habits. But recent studies suggest the stories we share on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere are unreliable, polarizing, and even destructive to the social order.

A recent experiment published at Buzzfeed demonstrates that an average of 28.55% of articles shared on partisan social media are either mostly false, or a mixture of truth and fiction.

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Another study, done by Gnip analytics and reported in the new issue of The Atlantic suggests that across-the-aisle dialogue could make up as little as 10% of social media interactions.

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How much of that do you suppose is friendly crosstalk? Not much, according to yet another study by scholars from George Washington and American universities. According to their study of social media during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the authors say the most politically active social media users were also the ones most prone to spreading stories promoting paranoia and violence.

Indeed, to those of us who have studied the role of social media in uprisings such as Iran's "Green Revolution" and the Arab Spring, this all comes as no surprise. Social media platforms like Twitter were instrumental in organizing the protests that led to the overthrow of despots throughout the Middle East. But when the smoke cleared, and the ousters had been accomplished, old dictatorships were replaced with new ones, and the few democratically elected governments were fast dominated by hardline Islamists.

Photos:Celebrity hoaxes

Photos:Celebrity hoaxes

In August 2015, a parody news site set fans to worrying after it falsely reported that actor James Earl Jones had died.

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Photos:Celebrity hoaxes

One Direction fans lost it for a minute in December 2014, but reports that Niall Horan was leaving the group were debunked by Billboard. The UK sites that tweeted the rumor said they were hacked.

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Photos:Celebrity hoaxes

No one's safe when it comes to Internet death hoaxes, and that includes popular dog trainer Cesar Milan. After erroneous reports that Milan had died erupted in early December 2014, he posted a rebuttal on Instagram, assuring his fans that he was "safe, happy and healthy."

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Photos:Celebrity hoaxes

Celeb hoaxes: It just wasn't true – In early December 2014, the Internet was briefly tricked into believing that rocker Axl Rose had passed away at 52. The reports were false, and Rose responded to the death hoax with good humor: "If I'm dead, do I still have to pay taxes?" he asked on Twitter.

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Photos:Celebrity hoaxes

There was a rampant rumor in November 2014 that Robert Plant had turned down an $800 million contract that would've led to Led Zeppelin's reformation and a reunion tour. The only problem? It wasn't true. Plant's publicist called it "rubbish," and Richard Branson, who was said to have been financing the effort, also called the report "completely untrue."

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For some reason, in early November 2014, word spread on the Internet that "Home Alone's" Macaulay Culkin had died. The actor and the musician took the gossip in stride, debunking the rumors with proof of his existence before poking fun at them with some "Weekend at Bernie's"-style photos.

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In September 2014, many on the Web were swindled into believing that actress Betty White had passed away. Thanks to a headline from the satirical outlet Empire News that read "Actress Betty White, 92, Dyes Peacefully In Her Los Angeles Home," some assumed that the star had "died." Thankfully, White is alive and well.

No need to start mourning. A report that "Orange is the New Black" was canceled is not true, E! assured the world. The buzz apparently started after a humor site posted that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said: "A woman's place is in the home, in the kitchen, taking care of children. A woman in jail? How does anyone watch this show in the first place?"

For those who believe Andy Kaufman faked his death in 1984, the latest reports could have been seen as a glimmer of hope. But it now appears to be just an homage to the eccentric comedian.

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Seems like every day social media kills another celebrity. Recording artist Raz-B was said to be in a coma after being hit by a bottle in China. His rep denies that his camp started the rumor.

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Remember when the White Stripes, Meg White and Jack White, were claiming to be siblings? Turns out they were actually married. The two divorced in 1999, and the band broke up for good in 2011.

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Singer Lauryn Hill may be strong in some of her opinions (she reportedly prefers to be called "Ms. Hill"), but there appears to be no truth to the story that she told MTV she would rather her children starve than have white people buy her music.

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Photos:Celebrity hoaxes

Marilyn Manson is way out there, but he did not have a rib removed so that he could more easily ... pleasure himself.

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Singer Billy Idol may sorta have the hairline for it, but he did not portray Eddie Munster on the television series "The Munsters." That was actor Butch Patrick.

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That Richard Gere gerbil story just refuses to die. And that's all we are going to say about that one.

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Call it a hoax or an urban legend, but the kid who played "Mikey" in the Life cereal commercial back in 1971 did not die from consuming Pop Rocks candy and soda. A now-adult John Gilchrist told Newsday in 2012 that he still enjoys the cereal.

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Author James Frey found success when he appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to talk about his book "A Million Little Pieces." He also found scrutiny and shame when it was revealed that his memoir about struggling with addiction wasn't entirely true.

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Photos:Celebrity hoaxes

Before 2006, novelist J.T. LeRoy was thought to be a young male truck-stop prostitute who chronicled his treacherous tales in critically acclaimed novels. But the persona was later revealed to be the invention of writer Laura Albert. In person, LeRoy was played by Savannah Knoop, who made appearances disguised as a man.

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Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers from the kids show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," was neither a Marine sniper nor a Navy SEAL with confirmed kills in Vietnam. We aren't even sure how this one got started.

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Lady Gaga does sport some flamboyant outfits, but we assure you that she is a woman and not a man dressed as a woman, as some have claimed. Nor was she born a man and had a sex change.

This one caused such an issue that Oprah Winfrey felt compelled to invite Tommy Hilfiger on her show to prove she never kicked him off it. Every few years the story pops up that the designer was asked to leave Winfrey's show after he said he didn't want African-Americans and Asians wearing his clothes. So not true.

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Sorry porn aficionados: A young Barbra Streisand, seen here in 1966, did not appear in a stag film. As The Village Voice pointed out in 2003, it was just an adult film actress with a pronounced nose.

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Star Jones let the world believe she relied on diet and exercise when she started shedding weight in 2003. She finally came clean in 2008, revealing she had gastric bypass surgery to lose more than 160 pounds. OK, this one might be more of a fib than a hoax, but plenty of people took the deception very personally -- including her former "The View" boss Barbara Walters.

Like digital platforms in general, social media is great at disrupting institutions and industries. But when it comes to the hard work of reform and building sustainable systems, it is a dangerous hindrance. Stable government depends on a pause in revolutionary fervor. Open societies rely on people's faith in the good intentions of their fellow citizens. Democracy can't function without a well-informed electorate.

But as the previously-mentioned studies show, social media encourages exactly the opposite of all these virtues. Our personally-tailored social media feeds create what the legal scholar Cass Sunstein calls enclave extremism — groupthink and factionalism with a tendency to spiral into zealotry.

This happens in part because social media are biased in favor of duplication and repetition. It is easy to share a story, retweet it, reblog it, or affirmatively "like" it. But Silicon Valley designers have yet to invent an emoji that means "poorly argued, but reflecting valid concerns."

Add to that the fact that the most shareable stories are "click bait" designed to generate quick bursts of outrage and self-righteousness. What you get is a thousand niche realities, each spreading misinformation, mistrust, and rage.

Unfortunately, we in the United States are beginning to see the political consequences of social media's bias towards the outrageous and untruthful. Regardless of who is elected President in November, that person will face a crisis of legitimacy stemming from accounts of election fraud and suppression, or foreign or intra-party meddling. Some of these news items will contain kernels of truth, but many will not. And all of them will be spread on social media.

The very structure of social media — peer-to-peer and relatively free of oversight — means that this will not be an easy hurdle for the next President to clear. Meanwhile, social media use continues to spread worldwide. It may ultimately fall to users to de-escalate the war of words and pictures before it becomes a global digital war of all against all.

As the experience of the Arab Spring should remind us, virtual unrest can easily spill into the streets. We should ask if all the "likes" in the world are worth that outcome.